TO A CAGED SKYLARK, REGENT’S CIRCUS, PICCADILLY.
BY B. SIMMONS.
The city’s stony roar around!
The city’s stifling air!
The London May’s distracting sound,
And dust, and heat, and glare!
She sings to-night who puts to shame
Her fabled sisters’ syren-fame;
And, swarming through one mighty street,
From all opposing points they meet;
And hurrying, whirling, madd’ning on,
The crashing wheels and battling crowd
Are coming still, and still are gone—
The Thunder and the Cloud.
But the gush of faint odours
From apple-tree blooms—
The dew-fall by starlight
In green mossy glooms—
The sob of low breezes
Through hill-lifted pines
Looking miles o’er lone moorlands
While evening declines—
The dying away
Of far bleats at the shealing,
The hum of the night-fly
Where streamlets are stealing—
All are floating, this moment, or mournfully heard,
(Distinct as lutes mid trumpets) round thy cage, heart-breaking Bird!
They heed, nor hear—that seething mass—
But storm and brawl and burst along,
Porter and Peer—the City class—
And high-born Beauty shrined in glass—
The pale Mechanic and his lass—
Thick as the scythe-awaiting grass,
In one discordant throng.
While, loud with many a clanging bell,
Some annual joy the steeples tell,
And waggons’ groan and drivers’ yell
The loud hubbub and riot swell;
Yet still the stunn’d ear drinks, through all, that liquid song.
And far sinks the tumult,
And takes the soft moan
Of billows that shoreward
Are lapsingly thrown,
When the stars o’er the light-house
Set faintly and few,
And the waves’ level blackness
Is trembling to blue.
Wing’d Darling of Sunrise!
How oft at that hour,
Where the grassy lea lovingly
Tufted thy bower,
Thy friends the meek cowslips
Still folded in sleep,
Didst thou burst, and meet Morning
Half way from the deep,
And circle and soar
Till thy small rosy wing
Seem’d a sparkle the far-coming
Splendour might fling!
How lavishly then
On the night-hidden hill
Didst thou rain down thy carol
Deliciously shrill—
Still mounting to Heaven,
As thou didst rejoice
To be nearer the Angels,
Since nearest in voice!
And thy wild liquid warbling,
Sweet Thing! after all,
Leaves thee thus aching-breasted,
A captive and thrall.
For the thymy dell’s freshness and free dewy cloud
A barr’d nook in this furnace-heat and suffocating crowd.
No pause even here to list thy lay;
The human ferment working
Must on with unresisted sway
In bubbling thousands swept away,
Nor near thy cage be left ONE HERMIT-HEARER lurking.
Twin minstrels were ye
Once in sunshine and shade
With thy hymns to the Love-star,
His rhymes to the Maid.
How sweet was it then,
As he linger’d at noon
Beneath trees dropping diamonds
In shower-freshen’d June,
Beloved of the Rainbow!
To mark thee on high,
Where violet and amber
Were arching the sky;
And to deem thou wert singing
Of comfort to him—
Of some Bow yet to brighten
His destiny dim!
From thy Cloud and his Dream
Long the glory is gone,
And the dungeon remains
To each desolate one:
And as vainly as thine would his spirit up-spring,
Beating against his prison-bar with faint and baffled wing.